Oral history interview with Edgar Heap of Birds

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Wednesday, January 12, 2011 and I'm interviewing Edgar Heap of Birds as part of the Oklahoma Native Artists Project of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at Edgar's studio in Oklahoma City. Edgar, you're a member of the Cheyenne- Arapaho tribe, a full professor at the University of Oklahoma, and an artist with a national and international imprint. I really appreciate your taking the time to talk with me.

Heap of Birds: Sure. It's good to be here [to speak to you].

Little Thunder: You were born in Wichita, Kansas, and lived there through high school. What was it like growing up there?

Heap of Birds: Well, it was a kind of an underprivileged area. It was mixed race, south part of town. Plain View is the name of the district. But it was mainly a lot of aircraft workers. That's what Wichita all is--Beech, Cessna, Boeing, Lear Jet. My father was an aircraft factory worker for twenty-eight years and raised his family, six kids, up in Kansas.

Little Thunder: Was your mom a homemaker?

Heap of Birds: She was a homemaker. Then, later when we got a little bit older, she went to work for the aircraft factory as well. There was actually a pretty tight-knit urban Native community, mixed tribal, inter-tribal community in Wichita.

Little Thunder: So were you involved with the Indian community there, your family?

Heap of Birds: Yes, and my Cheyenne relatives were in the area, too. Came up from Oklahoma to find jobs.

Little Thunder: What experiences did you have with art in public school?

Heap of Birds: Not too much. Just the regular kinds of things--when there was nothing else to do, they'd make you do art. (Laughter) But the odd thing about that, I have to say, is that I did a lot of drawing as a kid. That's what I look for most artists to be saying, too. When they were youth, they drew a lot, 2:00compulsively--which I did, and another kid did, too. So, in third grade I got an art scholarship to an art institute, in this really impoverished little school. It was sort of a fancy art studio program outside of town, on the edge of town. And I got my first art experience from being in that little school.

Little Thunder: Was it like a summer program?

Heap of Birds: It was an after [school], kind of evening program, and Saturdays. I learned how to do some drawing, like spheres and triangles. Typical, sort of boring studio [work]. Charcoal. Later I became a drawing professor. I'd teach drawing at Yale University, all that, but I did that when I was in third grade, actually.

Little Thunder: Did your family make a lot of trips back and forth to Oklahoma?

Heap of Birds: Yes, and my dad sort of taught us that we weren't really from Kansas, although I went to KU, and I really like the Jayhawks. But Oklahoma's 3:00where we came from. I came back after grad school in London and Philadelphia to Oklahoma. My dad retired from Beech Aircraft and came home, so we're all back pretty much now. Back in Oklahoma.

Little Thunder: You started school at Haskell Indian Nations University before it was a university.

Heap of Birds: Well, I was at KU [University of Kansas], actually. I just took a couple classes [at Haskell]. I studied with Dick West at my own desire, but I'm a KU art student. Haskell was just kind of a side bar to my time in Lawrence, Kansas.

Little Thunder: Can you talk about studying with Dick West, and what kinds of things you were exposed to?

Heap of Birds: Well, he was pretty parochial about how he dealt with Native Art. I mean, we had almost like "war dance class" painting. But it was his 4:00off-the-cuff remarks that were great. We're related through one of my grandmothers, and he knew that. He didn't know what I [did] as an artist--he wasn't really privy to that. But he said something to me one time. He said that as an artist--I, he, we--should take the white man's expectation and then feed it back to them like it was blankity-blankity, and make them eat it. He said different words than that. And here come all my interventions, all my public art, all my efforts that take the dominant culture's expectations or their 5:00values and then you turn it around and cut them with it. I don't think about Dick West when I do that, but he was aware of that kind of perspective.

Little Thunder: Right. So you were at KU. What kinds of things were you doing over there?

Heap of Birds: At KU I did the Foundations Program, a very rigorous program. KU is a serious art school, so they had two-dimensional design, 3-D design, life drawing, a really rigorous art history--the book Jansen, the big thick art history book--and then an elective. That was your freshman semester. So, it was really hard. I did that for a year, and then I was privileged enough to be chosen as one of the outstanding freshmen in the program. A lot of people came from art academies and probably had a lot of other training, but I worked really hard and that led me on to distinctions, and I got other scholarships from the 6:00painting program. But I went into design--a lot of people might have empathy for this--coming out of the aircraft factory mentality that you had to have some kind of vocational skill. I still didn't understand what college really was, or how open ended it could be. So, I went right after freshmen year into design, graphic design, and then with text and all kinds of stuff like that. And oddly enough, their leading professor told me I was ill-equipped to handle words in my practice, that I wasn't really good at it. I should probably think of something else. [Now I'm] publishing and designing and all that, which, I do all the time. I'm making a piece about South Africa in the next two hours.

Anyway, his perspective was that I wasn't really a client-based artist, I'm not 7:00the kind of artist that [someone] comes in and says, "We have [handicapped] children. We want a postage stamp by Wednesday that has [handicapped] kids on it. We want you to make people feel sorry--" I am more creative in my own outlook. I'm not going to go make a dog food thing, and then make something else for the Post Office. And he was right. So, I went into painting, and did painting all throughout KU, and became one of the main painting students they had. I went to London after that, and went to California before that, and followed these really very, very brilliant painters at KU. We had ten, which is amazing, ten painting professors who came from Yale, Berkley, Seattle, Illinois, RISD [Rhode Island School of Design]. So, I was taught by really leading painters of the day, and they taught me where they came from. Then I ended up going to all those places. I've taught at Yale, I taught at RISD, I went to 8:00school in London Royal College of Art. All these places that sort of showed me I was able to go forward.

Little Thunder: Were you doing much abstract work? Was that your focus?

Heap of Birds: Yes, I was doing abstract painting. And also some installations--sort of tactile, with fabric and rope. Still based on a premise of beauty and design, but three-dimensional kind of pieces.

Little Thunder: You definitely got a global head start by pursuing graduate studies at the Royal College of Art in London. What was that like?

Heap of Birds: Well, that was a great experience. It was very challenging, and again, it was like, Howard Hodgkin was a professor there. Howard Hodgkin--he has a piece that's still up, it's at the Met. I saw it at the Met the other day when I was in New York City. So, Howard is like Art History. Francis Bacon lived down the road in Chelsea--it's that kind of place. David Hockney went to school where 9:00I went to school. The Royal College of Art is one of the leading colleges in the world for painting. Peter de Francia was the chair. He lives part of every year in France, and then in London, but he gave me a scholarship just to go look around Europe. He was a great guy. He said, "You need to go to Europe," so he gave me some money, and he gave me an itinerary of his favorite [art collections] to see in Europe, and I took off.

Little Thunder: Where did you go?

Heap of Birds: The first trip, I took a boat to Amsterdam and then saw the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and then went to Harlem and Frans Hals Museum. Looked at stuff in Northern Europe. Went across to Reuben's house in Antwerp, and then Paris, to see all the things in Paris. I came back to London, and that was my circuit. The next time, I took a train to Rome through the Swiss Alps. I went to 10:00the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, Florence, along Pisa, back to the Riviera, along del Monaco and hang out in Nice, and see the Picasso Museum in [Biot], and the Leger Museum [in South of France], and then come back to Paris. I still have his note he gave me. He's a major figure in art, and he showed me where to go, and I followed his directions. I had a big show, of course, with the National Museum of American Indians in Venice, so we were in Italy. We go to Italy a lot, but anyway--all those times. And it's just continued to grow. My son's been to Italy with me, and Paris, too, so we continue that same legacy today.

Little Thunder: What a great art education. Was that your first time out of the country?

Heap of Birds: Yes, it was. It was a big shock. From Wichita, Kansas, to London, England just knocked me out. I couldn't hardly stand it. I was covered with 11:00soot. I was covered with black dust from the buses and the coal being fired in all the furnaces and stoves. I hated it for about three months. I couldn't take the business and the noise. Then, of course, in four or five months, I loved it, and I wanted to move to New York City after being in [London]. That's why I went to the school in Philadelphia, because it was actually close to New York.

Little Thunder: At Temple University?

Heap of Birds: At Temple. Tyler School of Art. Actually, I applied to Yale and to RISD, and to Tyler, and I got rejected from both the other places. Then I got accepted to Tyler, and in an odd kind of poetic way, I've been professor at both the other places. It cost them a lot more money to have me come, than the other way around. (Laughs) So I've visited all the other places and taught there.

Little Thunder: When and where did you first begin showing your artwork for sale?

Heap of Birds: Gallery-wise? I've had more museum exhibits, I think. I'm more 12:00focused on that. I don't really sell much work. I work on my own kind of level, my own kind of desire, and I don't make much for anyone's purchasing. If they want to buy it, I like them to buy everything they can buy, but I don't really [make art for] that. So my first museum show, I was twenty-six years old, and it was a museum in Philadelphia. I was still on the East Coast, and was showing in New York a bit, in an artist-run gallery space and museum exhibits. I've kind of done that, and I continue to do that, oddly enough, twenty years later. I'm still showing in museums and artist-run galleries and very few commercial galleries.

Little Thunder: Was it scary having your first museum show? Do you remember how you felt about it?

Heap of Birds: Yes, I was very bad, in the sense of being more egotistical as a youth. You think you're [going] to sell everything. "I should get a gallery show 13:00and I should be on fire." And they said, "Well, no you're not, actually. You're not very important." And nothing happened. I got my work out, and then I got an understanding of what I was doing. But I've continued just to work in that same manner. It started me out as a way to handle space in a museum. I can handle the actual space, rather than just exhibit the painting or the drawing on a wall. I tend to kind of overcome the actual environment with my work, and create a sensibility. So that was a beginning. I also did some historical curating, too, with the University of Pennsylvania. It was an ethnographic museum, so I was able to show all my contemporary work. Then I had a satellite exhibit in an adjoining space from the museum collection, with their antiquities from the Prairie, a huge, anthropological kind of museum space. I took all the work out 14:00of there from Cheyenne-Arapaho history and put it with my show. So, they had both.

Little Thunder: You were pretty prominent on the New York art scene in the 1980s. Can you talk a little bit about some of the work you did there?

Heap of Birds: Well, the main thing, I guess, was the piece at Times Square. It's called In Our-Language, my first public art piece. It's what you call a billboard. At that time, I was really very privileged to be working with Keith Haring. Keith Haring had a piece there, a major artist. David Hammons, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holtzer--all these people that have become historical figures. We were all young in the '80s, so that was my first splash into the art scene. Lucy Lippard was on the committee to choose me, and she's a major critic book author on contemporary art. I was able to pick the [writers] for my Venice Biennale project so I actually chose her to write for the book. She's in a book that I 15:00have now. She wrote a major essay. We still are friendly. So, it was great. I still go back to New York a lot. I still work in New York. I really enjoy the atmosphere and the work there, and I send a lot of students there from OU as a painting professor. I have about three or four professional artists living in New York City who are my painting students, so I channel students from here to New York.

Little Thunder: Did you get a grant to do that project at Times Square?

Heap of Birds: They chose ten artists, or twelve. It was a competition, and Hans Haacke was one of those that they were looking at, so they picked ten of us. We had a month apiece--each artist had a month, and every twenty minutes, your 16:00message came up on the big computer billboard. And my piece, of course, was just a translation of what [the word] for white man is in Cheyenne, which is spider. So I told everyone, "You're a spider. You make fences, you make reservations, you capture things, you kill things, you wrap it up." I think the main thing about that, which I'd like to expand on for everyone else, is that's what we need more of. Not an artist coming forward from a Native community to talk about themselves or the community, which is always a desire of the white man, to hear about our [cultural ways]. I think we should come out and talk about them. Given the opportunity to talk, don't talk about yourself, talk about them [, the dominant society]. Talk about the plight or the circumstance you find yourself in. Native artists will very rarely do that.

Going back to your other question about galleries, that's the problem. The gallery is going to sell what you make, and make it kind of palatable for the 17:00gallery patron to buy something. And are they going to buy something about themselves? Probably not. Or a good straight discourse about political upheaval in Native America? No. But if you give them some kind of coyote story, they're going to buy that. And they're going to be happy, you're going to have some money, but we're going to get nowhere. So, anyway, I did that in Times Square. And actually, I had a very upset stomach for like three weeks. I couldn't eat, because I had written that whole piece about, "White man's a spider." I sent it to New York, and I was going to go to New York and make it on the computer. And then they had censored Hans Haacke before me. Hans Haacke is a major political artist, and he does a lot of very hard edge stuff, so they kicked him out of the program. I was coming, and I knew I wasn't going to change my text, and so I had 18:00this kind of internal medical problem. The moment I saw my text on the billboard, I got well. Sort of like Woody Allen, he was fine after he wasn't on TV. I don't do that anymore, and I'm fine with challenges like that, but that was a beginning, to go back to what Dick West said, to put excrement in their face, and make them eat it. Say something about them from our perspective, and so I had to keep doing that in all my work.Little Thunder: Was there any reaction from the newspapers?

Heap of Birds: Yes, it was in The Village Voice. We made a film, too, so it traveled the world on film. It was on [at an] international video festival. And it keeps being played. It's in books--it's art history. One project in Hartford, Connecticut, where a curator picked me up at a major museum, [he] told me at the airport that I was his thesis question for his MA. If he didn't know me, he 19:00would have flunked. He said, "Man, I'm glad I knew who you were, because I wouldn't have gotten my Master's degree." The Times Square piece was part of that time, so it's good.

Little Thunder: That's a real compliment to your impact. Many of these things that you're talking about are concept art. Can you define concept art for us?

Heap of Birds: Well, conceptual art, I find a lot of that can be based on like a process, say, not on the outcome that you see visually. It could be a process of, "How did you make it?" "How did you form it?" And then, "What are the 20:00priorities involved with it?" What's interesting for me, maybe everyone else should know this, too, certainly. Given all these years--I've got like twenty years in ceremonial learning. So, I'm an instructor, and I'm in the middle of all these Cheyenne ceremonial ways for the last twenty-plus years. That's why I live in Oklahoma. And all those things are about process, see. They're not about the outcome. The outcome of Native art has been a white man's design. You see something, it is narrative, it has a story, and so on.

All the things within ceremonial learning are symbolic. There's no need for a narrative because we are the narrative. We're the living narrative. We would dance, there wouldn't be a picture of us dancing in the dance. Why would they 21:00make a painting of us dancing in the dance? We're going to just dance. Or [there's] going to be a song, a prayer. None of it is narrative, in a picture. That's someone else's design. And it's a big fallacy that many artists re-create for their white patrons. So, if you really understand your own religious doctrine as a Native person, it's going to be in symbolism and in process, maybe directional--to the sun and the stars and Polaris, and all these things that are up above us. You're going to do something in that direction. You're not going to make a painting of yourself, doing something that direction. You're going to have to face that star.

So, the process and the issue of conceptual art is Indian [, in a traditional and modern manner]. It's at the basis of all of our religious practice. The symbolism and the priorities involved, not necessarily the visual outcome of it. 22:00I've learned that over the years, and it's been great with my art practice because I continue to make memorial stuff. I [made] a big impression in Venice, Italy for Buffalo Bill's warriors, who died all over Europe. I made a memorial because I came to Italy for the Venice Biennale. They came to Venice, also, in the 1890s, to [perform] a Wild West Show. And they were mistreated, and they died. They're buried all over Europe. So, when I would come to Europe, what should I make? I should make a memorial. I shouldn't make a piece about myself or my tribe. I should make something about the tribes that were lost there. Just that kind of mentality, of making the memorial song first. Like when you have a [Cheyenne social] dance, what's the first song? Memorial song. You don't have a dance for me. It could be a dance for me or my son going to college or whatever--they're not going to have a song for us. They're going to have the memorial song first to honor all those that have passed on. Then, a little bit later, they're going to get to you. That kind of prioritizing is what I think is 23:00best, but it's traditional. So, that's what I do with my art practice.

Little Thunder: Did you hook up with Indian artists back East? Or has that been a bigger part of your life in Oklahoma? Conceptual artists.

Heap of Birds: Yes, I did. The American Indian Community House had a gallery, which is a Native American social service center, and they have their own gallery, which was a very provocative gallery, a good gallery. And they put it in SoHo, when Leo Costelli had his gallery on West Broadway, so it was in the right area, and we showed there. Peter Jamison was the director. He's a Seneca man. He [now] lives on his reservation in upstate New York. He's a ceremonial leader up there. He left the city, maybe twenty years ago, but yeah, we had a lot of good kind of community things happening. And, also, artists that were not Native, certainly. I have a lot of friends and I work in the Native Art world, 24:00somewhat, but also be able--I wouldn't call it being ghettoized, but you don't want to limit yourself to that. You have all kinds of colleagues, globally, and Native Art or Santa Fe or the Indian Market, or even stuff in Oklahoma is just not very good. I mean, quality is very low. But the main thing is the expectation is toward the white patron, in a particular kind of way. So, that's very limited. I don't really tend to work in that vein too much.

Little Thunder: When did you end up back in Oklahoma, and when did you begin teaching at OU?

Heap of Birds: I came back to Oklahoma in '82 or '83, I think. I came back to find out more about the ceremonial life. I was kind of on this very high trajectory in the art world, and I actually had a piece in a show in SoHo, in 25:00TriBeCa. I took my Volkswagen bus and drove to New York City [from Philadelphia] and got my piece off the wall, and they said, "Are you insane?" I was in SoHo Weekly News. "When are you moving to town?" (I was in Philly, ninety miles away.) "When are you moving downtown [New York City]?" I said, "I'm moving to Oklahoma." "We'll never hear from you again." "You're an idiot." "You're insane." (Laughter) "You're taking your piece to Oklahoma?" I still have it sitting here in the back of my studio right now. But I needed to know more about the ceremonial life. I had a lot of questions and I was misinformed, uneducated about that. [I'm an] MFA, studied in London, all around, but didn't really know about that. So, I thought I had to find out.

I moved to my great-grandmother's house in this canyon, west of Geary by Yellowhair Hall. Didn't have a road or a bathroom or electricity. Lived out there and built a road, [installed] electricity, built an outhouse, and plumbing, later on, ten years later. Shot with my shotgun and had a garden. Had 26:00an old car that I broke the muffler off, every time I drove down a country road. (Laughter) That was my life for about twelve years. Then at the end of that twelve years, OU called me up one day--but for ten years I did artist-in-residence programs all over the state. That's how I made my money and got to work with children, which I still do today. I really like that a lot. So I just made it work out. I did the impossible, in a sense. I made a studio out there, too. Made all my work out there. The Times Square piece came from out there. I went to New York City to Times Square from that canyon out there, west of Geary.

Then OU called one day, and I was doing a project with Jimmie Durham in Northern Ireland. I was set to go to London on this project, and they called me, "Will you come be a professor?" It turned out, this guy who was a professor ahead of me at OU got a Hollywood contract to write [for] TV, for like $200,000 or something. He [the writer] called home and said, "I'm not coming back to OU." 27:00And they said, "Well, put it in writing. We heard that before." And they called me and said, "We want to give you his professorship and hire you." I didn't ask for no job. I didn't go there and talk to them. I wasn't looking for that. But I said, "When?" And he said, "In two weeks." And it's like, "I can't. I can't do that. I've got to go to Northern Ireland. I've got to go to Belfast. I've got to go to London." He said, "Well, you go, and we'll give you two assistants to [cover] your classes, [and] come back." And I said, "Where do I sign?" So I came down there and got a real job and health insurance. My first son [born] in my family--I had a monthly payment to the doctor to get him delivered. I had no health insurance. It was a very scary thing to do with a family. So, that was great. That was twenty-three years ago, and I'm still a professor at OU.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful. Can you talk about the Apartheid Oklahoma 28:00project that you did in 1989, how that came about?

Heap of Birds: That was about looking at Native history in Oklahoma and linking it to apartheid in South Africa. It was before Mandela was released, and I made billboards about Oklahoma running over Indian nations. And everyone knows, they have a celebration every year to commemorate taking away Indian Territory, which is appalling. I say that all over the world when I give lectures, and everyone just gasps. They pull little wagons, and go on the playground, and have their lunch. People are like, "Man, that is so insensitive, we can't even believe that happens." That's Oklahoma's legacy of insensitivity. So, I got with a public service group--we work with youth. We did billboards, we did t-shirts, and we did a protest march to the State Capitol on the day of the Land Run commemorations. We had people give speeches, make a rebuttal about that kind of 29:00insensitivity. So, it's still a premise going forward, comparing reservation insensitivity to South African apartheid insensitivity. Between that time, in 2000, I worked and lived in Cape Town. I had a studio in Cape Town. I was invited as a visiting artist [to the] University of Cape Town. I taught there. I did a collaborative project with black Indians in Rhode Island, and a black African from Cape Town. So, I've been working in Africa, and in that kind of 30:00brotherhood and community. Activism goes on.

Little Thunder: The media tool that you use, the billboard, is not as widely seen, probably, as a TV ad.

Yes, sure. My position is, over the years, you have to be inflammatory to become noticed. You can't just be courteous and nice, so I do that almost instinctively. I do things that are inflammatory to dominant culture, and then they get so pissed off about it, they publish it [as news]. It becomes part of [daily media]. They make it visible. My billboard is a tiny little thing. Almost 31:00my intent is to see that we get [that museum or viewer] mad, put it in the newspaper, and [everyone then] sees that! That's when I'm actually executing the piece is [when it's in] the newspaper or on television news programs.

Little Thunder: In terms of "Apartheid Oklahoma," or any other kind of installation art, how important is it to you that they know who the author of the work is?

Heap of Birds: My name is on it, if they want to give credit. If they want to get mad at me or something, they can. But it's not really important at all. Often, I don't put my name anywhere, and people think, "Well, this has no worth." But it's not really about me. It's not a cult of personality. It's about just delivering the message.

Little Thunder: I think it's more potentially subversive, almost, if they don't 32:00know who the author is.

Heap of Birds: That's a wonderful point, because then there can be the presumption that the authorities made it, which is wonderful. They might think that Oklahoma made that, the governor made that. (Laughter) I think that's what I want to do, usually, is be anonymous and [let them] think that the authorities have put out this provocative thing.

Little Thunder: What about the Medicine Wheel installation at the entrance to the Denver Art Museum? Can you describe that?

Heap of Birds: Yes, that one had a different kind of focus because it was, that is, the Fort Laramie Treaty territory. That was our first treaty that we lost with the US government. And it goes back to when we did migrate between the North and the South--Colorado and Wyoming and Nebraska. So, it has a lot more of my tribal kind of affiliation on my sleeve. I don't do that very often, but that 33:00one had to be about our ceremonial understanding. We actually spin [the installation] toward the Summer Solstice Sunrise. We got two trees, tilted ten degrees to vector of that sunrise. We GPS'd it. We did all this stuff to link it up with all of the universe. So, me and my wife, I tease my wife about it because like, here's my nomenclature, the Big Dipper. That's a pretty outstanding nomenclature to have, all the universe [supporting your artwork]. If you want to take issue with it, go talk to the Big Dipper about it. He's got something to say to you.

So, that's how that is. It's not just a sculpture, it's like our ceremonial lodge in a symbolic manner. The tree and the months of the year and the moons and all those things. And it's autobiographical, [circular arrangement of ten porcelain and steel fork trees] from a prehistory of Anasazi to Pueblo to Dine. 34:00We got involved in that area, much, much later in the 1800s. And how we traveled, with the massacres from Washita and Sand Creek and Medicine Lodge Treaty, all that stuff that happened to us. And my father being raised in a tent on Turtle Creek, east of Clinton, Oklahoma, chopping ice off the coffee pot in the morning, that lifestyle. [And] me, professor at OU, what I've done in just fifty short years, to travel that far. And him being a worker. Education is paramount on the last tree--all the advanced degrees you can earn. So, it's kind of autobiographical.

But what it hasn't done, it hasn't spoken about the regression, which as I get older, I'm getting more and more bitter about things going much worse for Indians. I think it's worse and worse and worse. We're not getting any better. 35:00And I've seen people in my nation and family--it's like you sort of head toward a peak, but then it kind of goes and crashes again. I can't say, in reality, that my sculpture's really true, because it's really optimistic in coming out of the massacre, and finding your ceremonial life, and going through Fort Marion [as P.O.W.'s] and all these things. Okay, here we are, at Denver Art Museum. A half million dollar sculpture, but no, it's not all good. Things are really bad for Indians--abusive behavior. But going back to the Sand Creek [Massacre] and going back to the Washita [Massacre], when they take away your leadership, when they murder your children, put your leadership in prison, where are the men? What are they going to do? How are they going to recover from that in even fifty short years or one hundred short years? And we haven't. We haven't recovered 36:00from that. Dysfunction is huge. So, I'm looking at newer projects to articulate some of that, because in my mind, the Denver sculpture's kind of been [positive]. It's good to show children, here, learn your education, learn your tribal heritage and come and be yourself. I want to give them that optimistic note, but I want them to know, there's also a chance you may fall back down the hill again.

Little Thunder: Let's talk about the project "Building Minnesota." Can you explain how that came about and what it consisted of?

Heap of Birds: That was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it was part of a touring show I put together of my work. It was called Claim Your Color, and Walker [Art Museum] is one of the major art museums in the world. They brought my show to their museum, and they asked me to present it in the gallery, in the big museum, but they also said, "If you want to, you can do a public piece, too." I got a 37:00song from Larry Long and Amos Owen, which is called Water in the Rain, and [is] about the hangings of thirty-eight Dakota Warriors by Abraham Lincoln. The chorus is, "Your tears, when you cry from that, is like water in the rain." It just flushes away. You can't overcome that. So, I had to make a piece about that. Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, executed thirty-eight Dakota warriors. After Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson killed two more. Hung two more at Fort Snelling. The other thirty-eight were hung at Mankato, Minnesota. So, I made forty panels about chest high, giving the Native name of every warrior that was executed, and Abraham Lincoln at the bottom--that he was responsible for it, and put them along Mississippi where the granaries were, where the Gold Medal and Pillsbury granaries are.

That discusses how the farmland was, why they were executed, that they wanted to 38:00move the Sioux out of Minnesota, and take away the land and make more farms. That's why no one thinks of Sioux when they think of Minnesota. They executed forty of their warriors, and [got] the tribe out of there. There are still some on the [Minnesota] reservation, but it's very small, compared to South Dakota. That caused a huge uproar in Minneapolis. They said, "Abraham Lincoln's our hero. We thought he freed the slaves." No, he organized the largest mass execution in America's history. They called me the new Charles Manson. They said I was a hate-monger to bring forward his name in such a way. But I didn't say, "You, so and so, so and so" [or use profanity]. I just said what he did. I found the letter he wrote to send the names forward. Again, America hides those things so well. I don't know if anyone living in Washington right now knew that. So, we need to go refigure Lincoln. But if you didn't know that Lincoln killed thirty 39:00eight warriors, what else don't you know? That's my point. It's like, "Whoa! That's scary. You don't know that he's authorized the largest mass execution then and since?" No one's done that since. We have a President's day. He's on our money. He's on the five dollar bill--he's on the money. So, that's just horrible. I had to say something, and the [Indian] community really embraced it. They came and blessed it, and people brought feathers and bundles from sweat lodges and tied them on it. It was something that had to be addressed. I'm not saying it was healed, but it was a beginning, to actually engage it.

Little Thunder: In addition to honoring the executed warriors and naming their executioner, you're honoring the environment that literally doesn't exist anymore. Like you said, the fish, the animals, the Birds: , the water, 40:00everything that was there-- How important is landscape in communicating the message of your installations?

Heap of Birds: It's really important. I think it begins with the land, and even when I traveled, when I was in Africa, I went to Zimbabwe first. I went to see the most ancient cave art I could find in the world, whether it was Matapos Hills, in Bulawayo. I went to Great Zimbabwe two or three times. I was in Botswana when these elephants went swimming [in the river]. I go to the Great Barrier Reef when I go to Australia. I work with aboriginal artists. I go to Great Barrier Reef and swim and snorkel with all the fish. I'm almost compelled to go back to the beginning, which is the spirits of Nature, before we kind of got it all fouled up in many ways, with human [misuse] and so on. I think it's really important. The paintings behind me are in progress. They're called neuf, 41:00which is the Cheyenne number four, but they go back to trees on the reservation by Geary. The juniper trees that I watched and walked for ten years, and then the fish I saw on the Great Barrier Reef when I snorkeled in St. Croix, or in Thailand with my son. I still go back and paint these remembrances, and they create a whole dialogue with me with Nature. I've been doing it for twenty years. Started on the canyon out there in Geary, and I still do that kind of work. [The natural world] kind of goes in and out of my political discourse, but in my visual art-painted discourse, Nature's always at the center.

Little Thunder: You've already addressed in some ways how travel has impacted your work. What about teaching abroad? How is that cultural experience different from going into a place for a few days or a week?

Heap of Birds: When you teach internationally, and even when you travel internationally, I feel what it's really about is making an exchange. It's not so much to go there and deliver something or to extract something. I think as a citizen of the world, you really go forward to trade. So I take my ideas and my teaching, and then I seek to get something back from the students or from the place. I've done collaborative projects in South Africa, Australia, and I've been working in Asia. I was in China just a few months ago, Beijing and Shanghai.

And what I do, too--the paintings have taken me into some printmaking processes that deal with cloth and fiber, fabric. I was in Java, Indonesia, doing some work with some students, and then I got involved with batik. I did some printing in Philadelphia and also in Korea. I make my own silk scarves, too. But I 43:00collect fabric that's printed from indigenous cultures, and I make clothes out of it--I design clothes, too. When I was in China, I went to a site that makes the indigo fabric. It's a little canal village outside of Shanghai. I bought, collected fabric from the artists there, and I'm making clothes out of that fabric right now. It's the original blue indigo plant, which actually is a medicine plant in a tribal way. They used it to heal people. But you can also wear it. A lot of the clothing I have that I teach in, when I go to teach or for work, is all from these trips. I have a whole series in my wardrobe of all these indigenous fabrics. I really enjoy supporting the artists that make the fabric, and I enjoy designing it and wearing it, and having that exchange with where I've been, giving them what I have, and back and forth.

Little Thunder: In 2007, you did an installation for that international art exposition in Venice called "Most Serene Republics." Can you talk a bit about the title, the nature of the project?

Heap of Birds: I do a lot of research, and I think you have to do that as an artist. You can't just be based on your own emotions and desire. You have to go find out what was there before you came. So, when they asked me to come to Venice--when I went there, initially, I'd never been to Venice. I'd been to Florence and Rome when I was in London. But my wife, Shanna Ketchum Heap of Birds: , is an art critic and an art historian. She's also a Navajo person. She was asked by the Smithsonian to write an essay about international affiliations 45:00in the arts, and she was asked to attend a conference in Venice, Italy. I just went along as her partner. I was Mr. Shanna Heap of Birds: . I went along, and it was great. She did her writing, and I kind of just hung out and listened to the speakers. I knew a lot of [the] people already, but it was actually her initiative that got me to Venice, it wasn't mine, and my fame or whatever. I went along with her, and I learned a lot.

A year later, the same group asked me to come represent the USA and represent Native America in the Venice Biennale. I made two other trips to do research before we actually made the piece. So, we were in Italy, in Venice, meeting the mayor's professor, the mayor's architect, going to the airport and going through security, and looking at [billboard] spaces at Marco Polo International Airport. 46:00Going to see the first place, called a ghetto, which is a term in Italian that refers to making cannon at a foundry--they closed the foundry down. It's an island off of Venice, and they put all the Jewish people there as a concentration camp in Venice. They made them wear yellow fabric on their clothing, and they called it a ghetto because it was a cannon factory-making place in Italian. Of course, ghetto, I use it just talking about Native American things. It's part of our speech. So I find those kinds of things out. I didn't know ghetto came from this little place on an island where they put Jewish people, where they make cannons. And I made a panel about that. I made a piece and put it up by Napoleon's Garden in Venice.

The "Most Serene Republics" is actually their title for themselves. If you look 47:00back in history, the Venetians are pretty pompous. (Laughter) You go to Venice, it's overblown, Elton John lives there. It's like [this] overblown thing, white man's palace or whatever. The Basilica of San Marcos Plaza, the Catholic Church and all that. Anyway, they said they were such a good society, they were such a good, hospitable, friendly, elite society. They were the most serene republic, they say. And then I found that they were what I call the Halliburton of the Crusades, the facilitators of all the ships that went to kill all the people in the Middle East. Halliburton is in Oklahoma. Bush's buddy, [Dick] Cheney, was 48:00president of that company, and they sell all the pizza and water to [the U.S. troops] in the Middle East wars in [Iraq and] Afghanistan. They got the contracts to, so it's all in collusion with making money. It's not a holy war. I found that they actually did all that. There was a town called Zora where the Venetian ships and the big-money people said, "Wow. We're into this crusade thing you guys are doing, but we want to get paid first. We [don't] know what's going to happen to you when you go to Constantinople. Can you go to Zora [first], and rip them off and take all their stuff, and bring back the money?" And they did. They went to Zora and they killed all those people, brought the stuff back, and paid the benefactors that run Venice. Then went to Constantinople and did their holy war. And [Ventians] took [people there] in their boats.

So, when all that kind of stuff happens, then they have all these things they stole and murdered for, in what they call "the treasury," which is actually a 49:00room inside the Basilica in San Marcos. Like, "Okay, I'm going to take all the stuff I kill people for and scalped them, I'm going to put it over here for you to come view." It was another ten cents to get in there, by the way, pay to get in. It's out of this world, the insensitivity. And it's celebrated. All the tourists are going, "Oh, look at that beautiful stuff." That beautiful stuff was stolen from the Middle East. It's not really Venetian stuff. So, anyway, under those circumstances, the Most Serene Republic, it's not. (Laughter)

I use it as an irony. Buffalo Bill's warriors, they were at Wounded Knee, they were under the gun. They took them out of Pine Ridge, they put them in a prison outside of Chicago called Fort Sheridan--they built this prison to actually kill white people that were in unions. They were worried about union uprisings in Chicago. They put a fort out there outside of Chicago--they put a whole staff of cavalry there to kill people if they ever did an uprising with the unions. And 50:00they weren't uprising, so the cavalry was sort of just hanging out, spinning their wheels. And so they took the people from Wounded Knee [and Pine Ridge], put them in that prison, and said, "If you don't behave [in South Dakota], we're going to kill these people here in Fort Sheridan." Buffalo Bill runs along, "Hey, you want to go to Europe?" "Well, yeah. Get us out of here. Let's go. Let's roll." He took them, paid a $20,000 rental fee, paid a brokerage fee to hang onto them. And then people died there. I documented sixteen deaths, fifteen, sixteen deaths all over Europe. So, that Most Serene Republic [can be compared] to America, sort of pompous, fairness and democracy--all this stuff that just is not true, and so I felt like it was kind of a good kind of pairing.

Little Thunder: So it wasn't a competition, per say, on the part of the National Museum of the American Indian?Heap of Birds: I'm sure internally there was 51:00probably some-- I was the second [Venice project done by N.M.A.I.]. James Luna was chosen two years before, so I was the second. No one has been chosen since. I don't know if that's good or bad, but there probably was some kind of internal competition that happened.

Little Thunder: When you're thinking about an installation like that, and you're over there researching, do you take photographs of spaces, or do you just kind of carry it in your memory?

Heap of Birds: I carry it. There's so many different kinds of variables. We'd have to get permission from the mayor to do things certain places. [The N.M.A.I.] was very forthcoming with the budget. They bought everything I asked them to buy. The airport gave me a huge, thirty-foot billboard where [the] customs checkpoint was. I could actually make my message right there, where it 52:00would be scrutinized to [as you entered] the country. An amazing thing. I thought I couldn't pull that one off, but we did. So, anyway, no, I take some video, I have some photographs. But I make notes and try to diagram a scheme of how to attack the city. Even the water taxis were a venue for me, some trashcans that they hire out, the face of the trashcan--we put stuff on there, so we're all over the city. The airport, on the gardens, everywhere. [To memorialize the Sioux lives lost was very important.]

Little Thunder: Tell me about your studio. How long have you had it?

Heap of Birds: Okay. Well, I worked for a long time at OU. When I left the [former Cheyenne-Arapaho] reservation, I got a house in Norman out by the lake, Lake Thunder: bird, and that was great. I had a big cabin. My boys grew up, running around. They're used to 500 acres out there [by Geary]--we've got like four acres over there, but there was a lot of woods. OU gives you a space in the 53:00art school. They gave me a small studio. Not small--I had it for a few years. Then I got the big sculpture in Denver, and I'm working twelve foot tall, fifty foot wide, and so I had to rent a big space for the sculpture. I made a full-scale model, forty, fifty foot wide, twelve foot tall, and I rented a big space down by Bricktown [in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma]. Had that for three years, and that was great to see that I could expand out of the university's small little space, and support it with my research, sales, whatever. Then after that lease ran out, I worked hard at finding another space. [My studio is now] in the Plaza District in Oklahoma City. I found this building--it was actually two. Used to be like a bar or something, a pretty derelict deal. I bought the whole 54:00building, and I gutted it and renovated the whole thing with electricity, plumbing, walls, roof, raised the roof.

Little Thunder: Did you do it yourself?

Heap of Birds: Yes, I designed it, contracted it out, central air and heat, and now you can't walk in here [it's so crowded]. (Laughter) I work here, and I store stuff. I feel strongly about that. I want everyone to know, if you're an artist, I want you to be able to put something up and leave it up. Don't work, if you can ever help it, taking stuff down, putting it back up--even if it's a kitchen table, or whatever, just leave it alone, walk in there. I've got all these words written here, about a hundred words. They're going to be some prints I'm doing in Santa Fe in April. They've been up here for two years. These paintings [have] been going for maybe six months. I get here maybe two hours every couple days, honestly. I don't work a lot. I have a family, so all my 55:00evenings are with my family. When I do come here, I'm pretty intense [about] getting some things done, and they're just waiting for me. It's locked up, alarm system, bars in the door, but I unlock it, walk in here, and within maybe a couple hours--listen to some sports radio, have my sandwich, I'll be painting. I'll paint for a couple hours, knock off, go back home. So it's really a good kind of marriage of lifestyle and having a building. And I own it. It's paid for. Insurance is high, but it's my building, and so it's great.

Little Thunder: People who know anything about Indian history usually have heard of the Sand Creek Massacre. At the Sand Creek National Historic Site, there have been some discussions and some action to allow Cheyenne-Arapaho tribal members 56:00more input into the site. Has anyone talked to you about being involved?

Heap of Birds: No, I hear about that, but I've never been active with that. I have some of that in my sculpture in Denver. I have a whole tree dedicated to that history. Also the Washita [massacre site]. But I'm very interested in Fort Marion. I was in Florida this year. My show from Italy went to Florida, so I went to Fort Marion for the first time. A big part of my history is about Fort Marion, my [great-great-] grandfather. So that's one of my big missions. It's on the back burner, to do a memorial at Fort Marion. I think that's something that's really needed, a voice down there about the history that happened in Florida.

Little Thunder: Because your grandfather was imprisoned down there.

Heap of Birds: He died there. He's buried there.

Little Thunder: I see. You judged the youth art show at the Cheyenne-Arapaho 57:00complex at Concho. How much judging do you do, and what kinds of qualities do you look for in young people's art?

Heap of Birds: That was a great gathering of young artists. There was some great flute playing, too. I've been fortunate enough to be able to--I still participate in the ceremonies as a practitioner. I'm [also] an instructor, but I've actually danced with these kids. They've been my colleagues, so I got to see some of them in that respect, too. I look at traditional learning that they might be exhibiting, and then some contemporary sensibility. So, it kind of mirrors, I guess, my [life's priorities], but I look for both sides of things. That part of it, in terms of the youth, is the best thing I do, one of the highest honors I have. I work a lot with the Respect [of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes'] program. I've been doing youth workshops at Colony Pow-Wow. I 58:00took a group of youth up to the Denver sculpture in the summer, and we made drawings of my sculpture. Took them to the [Colorado] Rockies baseball game and dinner and it was wonderful. And they went to Sand Creek on the way back. Now I'm working with elders, because [the] Respect [program] also serves elders. I did big art workshops with the elders in Watonga [and Seiling, Oklahoma]. I really, really like working with my tribal people and the youth, particularly.

Little Thunder: I know that labels are often misleading, but I think it's interesting when people explain why they reject or redefine or even embrace a label. Would you describe yourself as an artist who happens to be a Cheyenne, as an Indian artist, as a global cultural worker, or some other way?

Heap of Birds: The cultural worker is probably pretty appropriate. It depends on what kind of hat you're wearing at the moment. I work with kids. I'm going to Chicago here next month to work with kids. They hired me to go work with kids--they heard about me, they know what I do. I got a piece in downtown Chicago in the museum, but I'll be working with kids. The thing about that, it's not a demotion. The problem we have is there's a hierarchy, and it's some kind of exclusive thing. You have very few famous artists working with kids. "Well why would I ever do that? I've graduated to working with college students." Well, kids are more creative than college students, [when] you get to the point of it. You have more fun. I work with elders, and they surprise me, too. I'm very happy to work with elders as well. It's like a mixture of all the 60:00things--someone described some of this as a stew. You just have meat and the potatoes, or whatever. Is that good? Or you want to put some spices in? Vegetables, some barley in there, some chickpeas. It's like your diet, your life wants to be this variety to keep you going. The art world gets pretty isolated. I enjoy going to the museum, and having cocktails, and have my work guarded by security guards and a well-lighted space. I do that often, too, but I think I have more fun working with the elders and the youth. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What percentage of your work is conceptual art, what percentage is painting?

Heap of Birds: A big part of it is public art, I guess. I'm doing a piece in the 61:00Virgin Islands and the Caribbean, a small piece about the tribes that were lost with Columbus. That's been overlooked a great deal, where you talk about Caribbean people and think, "Well, Bob Marley made that place." Like you think it's a black--it's not a black place at all. No. Your amnesia made it a black place. So, my wife and I are going to go down there and lecture at the University of the Virgin Islands in San Croix. And I'm going to make some sign panels to remember the tribes that came before. That's a good way to kind of open up the discussion. With the public art, I always call it a puncture. It punctures the barrier. It doesn't remove the barrier, but it makes a puncture, and then I might come there and lecture. My wife might [lecture] about some artists in New Mexico, Arizona. We might have an exhibition. We might meet some other artists. Usually, it starts brewing this little storm of activity, and pretty soon, the remembrance is running its own energy. It's not me behind it. So, the public art is probably about half of my initiatives, which happens on the Internet, and corresponding grant proposals. I have to do a lot of writing. Probably ten percent is the painting, sort of more solitary. The lights are on, I listen to music, and I'm painting. I do drawings as well. I do pastel word drawings, and then I do a lot of prints with text. I'm going to do that in Santa Fe in April, make maybe fifty new prints. I exhibit those a lot, too. There's also research travel involved with all those projects as well. And travel grants to get to the place, like some of the prints I've exhibited in the last couple of years.

Little Thunder: Edgar, what is your creative process, from the time you get an idea?

Heap of Birds: I guess a big part of it is to find the synchronicity. You have 62:00an idea, you have an impulse or desire, but even with all these words I'm working on, I wait for an intersection of something else--could be historical. It can be based on politics or human rights or [or sensuality] or love. But it's just my own life, and then something intersecting with it, and making something out of that. I know people who write books or movies have a notebook, and they're always attaching things. They're like a sponge. They're soaking up things, and they log them in. Almost all creative people--even a musician. They're logging in stuff, and then you go back to the studio, and you start to weave it together into something else. So, the logging in is kind of the first impulse. Even with these painting shapes, I might come in and make four shapes 63:00in a day, and leave. And come back and make four more. I have four paintings going at the same time, so I work in that kind of sequencing. For me, it's like the right accumulation of things. The misnomer is you come up with this brilliant thing at once. No one ever does. That's a mistake. You come up with a piece of it. You get another piece of it, then another piece of it, and it might take another year. Then, if it is brilliant, it becomes something out of that. I've learned to trust that collecting of impulses. Then, I sweep it together, making something out of it.

Little Thunder: How important is sketching to that process of synchronicity?

Heap of Birds: Well, it's real important. It's like a first reaction. You get that reaction, and you put it down, and you get another one and another one and another one. The words I'm talking about, some of these things here, those are just kind of after thoughts. I have little books that I carry with me--I buy them at Wal-Mart. They're spiral notebooks. They're like discussion cards for a lecture, but they're on a spiral bound thing. I love that. I write three words on each page, and I fill them up when I'm traveling. I usually do it when I'm traveling. I do a lot of word things when I'm traveling on a plane or different experiences. Come back here, I transcribe them into these bigger sheets, and I re-form them. What they end up being is monoprints in a print studio, and that 65:00could take another six, nine months. Like I said, I'm going to go to Santa Fe. My favorite printmaker works out there, a Navajo guy. He's got a shop right by Cloud Cliff, downtown. I've already booked him for three days. I'm going to turn up there, and we're going to get the big roller out and the paper, and I'll start painting with the brush, and we'll start making these monotypes, which will later become an exhibition, probably, somewhere. They'll become an exhibition card. But an experience I had in Oaxaca, in Cuernavaca, two years ago, might become this print later on. So, there's a matter of keeping your life enriching enough to where you've got enough impulses coming in.

Little Thunder: A lot of your work draws attention to the forgetting and remembering that underlies the formation of the present day United States. Why is it important to make visible history that's been covered over or disappeared?

Heap of Birds: I always talk to my students about [re-examining] things like museums. They would see a fallacy in a museum, once they understand, an artist like me or others. They term it revisionist history, but it's not really a revision, it's just the truth. So, they see my work as an editorial. I'm making an editorial about Abraham Lincoln, but my point is that a museum's an editorial. Every exhibit's an editorial, and they thought it was some kind of God-founded truth, and nothing is. A book. Here's a book. Wow. But that's an editorial. Someone just said that. It doesn't mean it's true, at all. That's why it's important to keep chipping away at it, adding your take on it, and see what 67:00the response is. And maybe get someone else to add their response to it. And keep the dialogue going so it's not a monologue, which books tend to be. I don't really like books. (Laughter) I'm a professor, but boy, I don't want a lot of books around me. Because first of all, if they're art [books], they're about people that are dead. It's great you're here talking to me, but most art people are talking about people that are dead so they can't talk back. Almost all books are written about dead people. People don't want to write about live people because they're too messy. They might come and actually look, "Can I see what you're saying?" Art historians hate that. They don't want to have anyone talk back to them about anything. They make some kind of subjective decision or presumption about something. They want that to be the fact, and it's just a guess, honestly. Unless you ask me about it, it's just a guess. So, it's great to be able to kind of keep that flow going of the dialogue, rather than the monologue. And many authors and books in libraries and institutions are a 68:00monologue. They're not really about exchanged information.

Little Thunder: Using Native language is an important facet of your work. Can you talk about that?

Heap of Birds: Yes, I mean, that's part of that reclamation, too, using the language that you've had in your culture. But part of it, for me, it's just a way to actually get to cozy up to the language. You don't have an opportunity to use it often, so how do you use it? Like, my sons and my daughter, they all have Indian names. They don't have an English name, and at least when they use their name, they're speaking Cheyenne. They're speaking Navajo. They have a link with all the sky or with the fire or being a warrior woman returning home. They have this link with the story that they have when they get out of bed. When they write out their social security number and write a check. At least there's a way to use it, and be pragmatic about it. With my art, it's a way for me to learn 69:00about the language, because I don't know it. I don't speak it every day. I need a way to actually engage that linkage. Then also, it's a way--like, I spoke Italian in Italy in my work. It's a way to give credence to where you are, and to honor where you are. So, part of the pieces in Italy were in Dakota language, Cheyenne language, English and then Italian, so at least I was applying it to where I was. I was reasonable to welcome those people into my work and acknowledge them, rather than saying, "Here is all the Cheyenne, here's all this English stuff." Then you close a door. So it's good to open the door with language as a way to handle that.

Little Thunder: But the other thing is how Native language just changes the 70:00power dynamic for someone who only speaks English. It's exactly the position of Native people first encountering English.

Heap of Birds: Definitely. I did a big piece in Australia with an Aboriginal artist, a contemporary Aboriginal artist, and it was about Captain Cook, who landed at Circular Key Harbor, where the opera house is. That was his first spot to land, to walk in Australia, [to begin the genocide], and now it's a big tourist [location]. So, we were in the museum at that place, a big contemporary art museum. And we get the wall on the first door to open in that museum, on that piece of land where Captain Cook walked. And she wanted to make a piece about [it], and we made a very nasty, horrible thing about Captain Cook. She hates Captain Cook ,which was fine, and I agree. But she was adamant about not 71:00making it in anything but her language, and she was very articulate in Eora. And we had a didactic--you could read the translation. But she said, "No, we're not going to make any kind of compromise. We're going to lay down the words the way those people would have said when he walked up, and there's no English, British, nothing there." So I laid the Cheyenne down next to hers, too. So, it can be a stance of power and defiance, language.

Little Thunder: You use a lot of signs and maps in your work. How do they help you communicate?

Heap of Birds: Well, the signs, in particular, the authoritative nature of signage and panels, we tend to believe what they say. And it's a big mistake. People believe the authoritative voice. Obama comes on TV tonight and says 72:00something. "Hey, wow, we'd better think about that." Well, no, maybe not. Maybe he's just full of it. He's just another guy. He comes on and talks about the West. There's some weird stuff Obama says about the history and the West and the settlers. He has no affinity with any kind of non-American, political strife of indigenous people. I never heard anything--he talks like a regular President Bush to me. I don't hear [empathy] from him. When he says things, people hear that voice and they believe it. I want to be that, in the most subversive way. I want to be the authoritative voice that they think they're hearing, but I'm somebody else. (Laughter) I'm the puppeteer behind the curtain. I think we've made a lot of good progress. And we've confused people, too. The point about that museum exhibit I talked to the students about is maybe you should question [every] exhibit you see. That's a point. Here's a sign, here's a historical marker. You're driving down the road, pull over, look at it. Maybe you should 73:00think, "Is that true?" You see one of mine--you know mine has [an] editorial background. It's got a point of view that's tilted. Well, so does that [official] one. Maybe the other ones do, too, down the road, and so does that other one. If you can start to question the authority that's talking to you, you might be better off.

Little Thunder: The US is finally getting behind some of the UN resolutions to protect culture, languages, arts, land bases of indigenous people. Do you think this shift not only comes from, maybe, a shift in administration, but also from the work that artists have been doing, indigenous artists?

Heap of Birds: I think it can help, particularly if you have a political, hard 74:00edge to what you're saying. Because often, books and things take so much time, and so much money behind them to get the idea out, but an artist can have an idea today and make it tomorrow or make it tonight. We're pretty quick and very effective. I was in China the other day, in Beijing, and I gave an address to the University of Beijing. I [had done] a piece in '89 about Tiananmen Square, had a show of it in Hong Kong, and I pulled that out. We actually had it sent on Internet all the way to China the day of my lecture. It came through my computer like ten minutes before my lecture was going to happen. It's a very simple piece, about a four foot print, and it just says, "Don't Believe Miss Liberty." So, I was at Tiananmen Square looking at where they killed these kids, where the tanks pulled out, but also where they pulled out that Statue of Liberty that 75:00they made. They called it Goddess of Liberty. And they said, "Here's our future." I told the students, "Remember, the Statue of Liberty has her back to all the Indians. It faces to welcome everybody in New York Harbor. Its back is to all the Indians." So if you bring that to me, I don't trust her. I don't want to talk to her. She's welcoming everyone to come to Indian land [, giving it away]. Our lands are open to you. Well, not to the Indians, they're not open. No one asked us about that, see? So, here the Chinese students are being idealistic and saying, "We want that." And I'm thinking, "Do you? Do you really want [Miss Liberty]?"

And look what's happened now. China is like the Champs Elysees--Maseratis, Ferrari cars, miniskirts and iPods. It's humming. I was just shocked. It's more modern than New York City. It's way off the charts. And the pollution is as 76:00high, too, in the industrial zones. It's got this very weird thing happening with the US economy regulating our air, and then we buy all the stuff that's fouled up [the] air in China and bring it to Wal-Mart, and we use it. We tell them, "[China,] you should clean your air up," and [China is living with] dirt [in the air] for you to wear this shirt. The hypocrisy is just out of this world when you go see the places and see where it comes from. America has all kinds of problems with the money part that drives all these other economies. Plus, we're all broke, and we're borrowing our money from China. We have no money. We're buying all our capital from China, because they're making all the Wal-Mart junk, so the economy--I'm thinking about that a lot, the dollar, and parity with economies and land and so on.

Artists can cut right to the chase. I can say, "Don't believe Miss Liberty." I'm in China, that's what I told them [and show my print]. I went to Shanghai and 77:00said the same thing. Before you get on that boat, see where that boat's been. See how it's treated. They have, like, a thousand ethnic minorities in [various] parts of China--tens of thousands there, all over China. You can actually have [multiple] children in those cultures. You can have [only] one child in China. Those ethnic minorities aren't China, they're reservations. They can have ten kids. They have their own rights, they have their own laws. But everyone in China has to only have one kid. Have an abortion or they kill the other kids. So it's like, "Wow, that's amazing." How can you have sensitivity enough to handle all that? What do they think about that--regular Chinese society? When [ethnic minorities] can have all these children they can't have? Like America, the discrepancy is huge. It'll be interesting to see what happens in China in the years to come. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You're doing a lot of work with Cheyenne/Arapaho tribal members. 78:00Do you feel like your work is as accessible or well known as it should be in C&A country?

Heap of Birds: No, no. I think it takes that kind of hands-on stuff to get that way. What I've been surprised about is how receptive everybody is. They're like really, really interested, and really not resistant. There's a way I teach, I teach it like, "Here it is." When I do a workshop with elders, say, I give them all sweet grass and deer tails [, ceremonial items to use]. And I come in, "Okay. Here's the art deal, here's this and that, but here's what you really need. When we get done, here's fifty deer tails--and I bought them myself--and thirty hanks of sweet grass." We're working, and these dudes are like, "Hey, are the sweet grass ready?" "No, no, no." I know who they are, they're instructors--they want their stuff. So, in that way, I come on like a real--I am 79:00a real person in their society and their learning. So, when I do something else, well, that's just what Edgar does, so yeah. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What is your goal in re-educating the dominant society? You want that puncture that political art can do, so [people] get angry and the dialogue starts?

Heap of Birds: Yes, and it becomes noteworthy. It becomes a news article. It gets put on the table. That's what happens. So, when the puncture occurs, it becomes inflammatory. One thing I really would like to do is to take that Cowboy 80:00[Pistol Pete] in Stillwater and put his face on Eskimo Joe. That's my next project. Eskimo Joe is a horrible thing, and the Cowboy is--they ought to get together, and see who doesn't like what. What you need to do is take their things and mess with their [images]. Don't worry about your stuff, our stuff's fine. Go get in their junk and stir that stuff up. And they'll think, "Ooh, I don't like someone messing with my--" "Well, we don't want anyone messing with our stuff, either. How does it feel?" That's something that needs to happen, and then we'll raise awareness from that perspective.

Little Thunder: Looking back on your career, what was a pivotal point for you?.Heap of Birds: Well, the Times Square piece, and then coming back to Oklahoma. I could have been a New York artist all day long, and lived with all 81:00my colleagues and taught in art school, but I came back and learned about the ceremonies and lived on that canyon. And I still went back and taught in the art schools. I still go to New York--I'm known in New York. I do a lot of work in L.A., a lot of work in California. I have three projects going on in California right now, but I live in Oklahoma. Sometimes I come to [New York City] and people say, "How long have you lived here?" I never lived in New York. They think I live downtown somewhere, but I never did. I've been living here since 1982. I'm in Australia quite a lot, Africa, I'm in Asia, but you can make this work. I think you have to get out, that's the thing. These paintings I'm working on now, I'm thinking about doing some seasons, maybe. It's number four, there's four seasons, and so I limit myself to blues--that could be about the spring, 82:00and the green. Then I could do another series that could be the reds of the fall, I could do another series with white. I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple years ago. I go over there a lot when I go to town. I saw Monet painted the Seine, one day, in a snow storm. And it's the most beautiful painting. I sat and looked at that for about twenty minutes, and it's all white. It's just white. "This man painted a white painting with white. With different colors of white." It's just astounding to see that pulled off. I want to make a white painting, and make a series of white paintings--like there's ice and snow today. I enjoy pursing that, but again, I've got to go to New York City to see that Monet. I can't sit here in Oklahoma. I mean, Monet comes once in a while, but you've got to move around. I think [that way] you can stay here. This building I bought is super cheap on the market of the world. My house is, too. Oklahoma's a very inexpensive place to live and with the money you save, you 83:00should get on the road and see what's going on in the world, and come back and work on your studio practice, and share it with people in your community.

Little Thunder: What has been one of the highlights of your career?

Heap of Birds: I suppose being able to take your family with you. It's something I'm committed to. I took my sons all over to Africa, to Australia, my younger boy and I went to Thailand together, snorkeled off Koh Samui together. My daughter--she's twenty months old, she's already been to L.A. twice, New York City, Cancun twice, Chichen Itza. We're going to go to the Virgin Islands in a couple months, and Arizona, back and forth to the Navajo reservation. I think if you can be with your community, or your own personal family part of it, and then 84:00move. It's not easy, and I don't [always] have a good time. I took my daughter to New York, had to carry her up and down the stairs of the subway all weekend. I got tired and I didn't enjoy that. But we were together at Times Square, rolling around, laughing [in Central Park]. We have a little movie we made together. My mom and dad came to the inauguration of my sculpture in Denver, we drove up there together. They're there, and they're on the [museum's dvd] I made together. So probably having that privilege to share that with your family, keeping you together and growing together that way is probably the highlight of it all.

Little Thunder: How about one of the low points?

Heap of Birds: Low points? Well, being an artist in the contemporary world is about travel. One of my buddies, he's really famous, he's out of Napa Valley, a professor in San Francisco. We interviewed him for my classes this semester--one of my students interviewed him. They said, "What about being a famous artist?" He said, "Well, that's like living in hotels and airplanes, and I don't want to 85:00do that." He just got back from Sweden. He's like, giving a disclaimer, but he's not out like I am, that's true. Today, to be an internationally known artist, and to be practicing in the world, that's kind of your template. Your palette is the world. You have to be having a lot of jet miles. I have a lot of miles on American Airlines. I'm a gold member. I fly many, many miles and hotels--it's that kind of loneliness. You're by yourself again. You're in a wonderful place. By yourself. Again.

How long can I do that? I don't know. It seems to be important to get things done. If you don't go, you can't make it happen. If I didn't go to Australia and 86:00meet that woman that wanted to set up that Captain Cook piece, and have her defiantly want to speak in her own language, and go to the reservation and see how bad they live, I can't do that on Discovery Channel or Internet surfing. I have to go and sit with those people at the fire and see and be there in the hot sun, for me to get a clear vision, or as clear as I can. So, I have to be on the ground there, too. That's the hard part, that's kind of a solo thing. I went to Zimbabwe, like I said. At that time they were almost having a war. I took my family the next year to go to the game park. We lived in a tree house and saw a rhino and elephants and lion, but I went first to see if it was safe to go. I've been in Belfast working, too, but I don't think I would take my family to Belfast, per se, but I went to Belfast. I think it takes that kind of hands-on 87:00experience to learn about it, but it's not always pleasant.

Little Thunder: Is it possible to be an activist artist working within an educational institution?

Heap of Birds: I think so. I've learned something pretty curious. I've found that you're actually better off outside of the art school paradigm, rubric. [Art schools and art departments are] more conservative, oddly enough. The Arts and Sciences [department] is more free than the Art [department]. The art is bound by so many limitations. You'd think Art is like open, free, do what you want, but it's really not. But [the] Humanities is [about] anything you can think of. 88:00You can have a course on gender, homosexuality, any kind of thing you can think of. You can have a course about it in the Humanities, and write a book about it and read books about it. So, I've totally changed my appointment to be only in the Humanities. I can be an activist artist in the Humanities, oddly enough. But you almost have to be in your own niche, too. So, that may be helping me where I am as well. Art is competitive and your peers--if you set the bar real high, you get a lot of flak. And I don't slow down at all, my resume is like [fifty] pages long, and I add three pages a year to it, or more. So, if you have one exhibition, and I've got ten or something, then people will argue about all 89:00that. I don't like that. I'd rather just keep moving ahead and get the support to do that.

Little Thunder: Is there anything you'd like to add or we've forgotten to mention before we take a look at your work?

Heap of Birds: Just that the community is really important, and the youth is really important and the elders. And making your own priorities about what's important to your own people, locally. That's the real challenge. Even the University has their own agenda. They look at all my activism on the reservation, they say, "Yeah, but why do we want to do that? Is that what you're really supposed to be doing? I wish you'd be doing that here in this building [, university community]." Well, it's Native Studies, right? All these Native people are over here. You're always kind of pushing at the edges of how they define you, and they don't really like this, they don't like that, so it's good 90:00to kind of fill the cup to the edges, if you can.

Little Thunder: Well, let's take a look at some of your work.

Heap of Birds: Okay. We're looking at the neuf series paintings, and the main thing to consider here is that they're in progress, so they're going to fill up. You'll probably see one a bit later that's done. But these are maybe one-third finished. They're all shapes that came out of the juniper trees from the reservation west of Geary, in my ten years living out there, kind of as a symbol. Sketchy, kind of barbed type tree, and later, it became an image from the fish and the Great Barrier Reef fish. Then later, they sort of got fused together as this pattern moving across, like maybe a bank of clouds blowing by 91:00or something. I'm going to go back to the Virgin Islands in March and swim some more with the fish and kind of renew my time there again with the tropical fish. So there are four in the neuf. [You're supposed] to do something four times in the Cheyenne language. So, there's four paintings I do each time, and they get as big as ten feet. These are some small ones that I'm working on [and will be exhibited in a museum in Los Angeles].

These are--at one point, they were called "wall lyrics." They're three-word phrases that go together. "Touch Hard Watch" is one. "Wire Tree Rings" is another. They're chosen in some ways because of sound, but also, they're autobiographical sketches from an incident that might have happened to me. Sometimes they're actually combinations of two or three actions. What I do with 92:00them is I notate them in those small little booklets, and I bring them back here and I make these [drawings]. These are all vellum. I like this vellum paper. There's another step, later, where I take two sheets and make one message. Then I create a monotype in printmaking with color. [It's] a very kind of haphazard print-making process, open print-making process, so they're probably [the] epitome of a personal message, a personal transcription of something happening. They're also in a code. I've developed a code to write in, so no one really knows exactly what I'm talking about, unless you were there. It's a game I play with myself and the viewer, a kind of perverse game where you make this very 93:00personal, personal coded secret message, and then you show it publicly. It becomes public. It'll be in the [invitation] cards, it'll be in the newspaper, it'll be exhibited at museums. And you've got this kind of perverse secret about it. I'm very into it. I've been doing it for ten years. One level, people look at it and say, "Well, that's interesting in terms of your political art. That's kind of clear and cutting-edge." Or, "Your paintings are beautiful, lyrical, and then these are kind of sexy, creepy kind of secret things." It's true. You have to be all kinds of people to be yourself. You can't be one. That flies in the face of another archetype that's wrong, that there's a master work, there's one image, just one kind of style artists create. They're forced to do that [for 94:00this market], but I don't accept it myself. But, then, no one wants to buy my work because what do I buy? The words, the paintings, the public art? "I'm confus[ing to an art] collector, so I won't buy anything." I understand that. But this, what it tends to do for me is the real frontier, in a sense. What describes you. Art should describe you, the artist. That's what it does. It's not [just] for sale. So, when you do all this stuff together, it tends to describe me pretty good.

Little Thunder: Then everybody else brings their own associations with it, and the context in which they see it becomes part of the whole thing?

Heap of Birds: Yes, sure, and I really like that, too. That's what everything should be like. Everyone brings their own interpretation to whatever it is we make. Here's the card book. This is the one from China. These are all things 95:00that came from China.

This is one of the full scale models for [Medicine] Wheel, the sculpture in Denver. It's a tree. At the top it says, "Free" and that's Leonard Peltier's ID number at Leavenworth Penitentiary, so [it's] talking about free the Sun. Many Magpies is my Cheyenne name--Heap of Birds: . So, those are Magpies, which were actually drawn at Fort Marion prison [one hundred years ago], and I enlarged them. A warrior made those drawings of magpie Birds: . Then it shows the tribes of 2000. One side of the tree shows the population growth, and on the other side, the opposing side, [it] was a smaller--after the massacres the tribes were 96:00smaller. This side shows that they grew in time. So I made full-scale models, and we traced off of them to make the porcelain and steel prints on the sculpture in Denver.

Little Thunder: They're a beautiful red color.

Heap of Birds: Red steel porcelain. These were shown in New York City at the National Museum of the American Indian. We had a solo exhibition of the trees with some of my big drawings of words. The ones that are wrapped up were in New York City, actually, so your studio is like a big storage space, too. You work around the storage, basically.

Little Thunder: Thank you very much for your time, Edgar.

Heap of Birds: I look forward to all the other artists, too, and seeing their interviews, as well.

------ End of interview ------